After what was
humorously designated an “election” in Iraq, there was a marked
increase in calls for the United States to announce a timetable for withdrawal
from that unhappy land. Senator Kennedy, The Brookings Institution, and
a British government official were amongst numerous of the influential
class to propose such action. The rationale behind the timing of these
requests, one would assume, is that now that Iraq has displayed a measure
of what the White House calls “democracy”, the United States
can and should declare, once again, “mission accomplished” and
leave, without loss of face.

Such a proposal
might make sense if this thing called democracy was indeed the reason the
United States invaded and occupied Iraq. But the fact that Washington officials
do not miss an opportunity to make it abundantly clear that they have no
intention of leaving in the foreseeable future reveals how unenlightened
are these calls for departure; for the reasons the US is in Iraq have very
little to do with democracy, by whatever description. On February 17, 2003,
a month before the American invasion, I wrote an essay entitled: “What
do the imperial mafia really want?” It can be read online.{1} Briefly,
the essay

lists as motivations
for the attack: expansion of the empire, idealism, oil, globalization,
arms industry, Israel.

The election
in Iraq has been labeled “successful” in many quarters primarily,
it would appear, because it was held at all and there was much less of
the usual violence attending it on that day. For the record it should be
noted that Iraq held peaceful elections under Saddam Hussein on a number
of occasions. Individuals could run for parliament after being cleared
by the Baath party. Presumably, a similar process attended the recent election,
with clearance being provided by other sources, including occupation authorities.
Did any candidate try to run on a platform of early withdrawal of all American
military forces and the cessation of construction of some dozen permanent
American military bases? He likely wouldn’t have gotten clearance,
but since scarcely any of the voters were privy to the names of the candidates
or their platforms anyway the question is academic.

In any event,
it’s questionable whether the United States cares all that much about
who makes up the Iraqi government. Whoever it is will not have much power
to place obstacles in the way of Washington’s goals, particularly
concerning oil, military bases, the care and feeding of American corporations,
and catering to Israel’s needs.

Commie
rhetoric

“The defense
of proletarian internationalism is a sacred duty of each communist and
workers’ party and of every Marxist-Leninist.”

During the Cold
War, we were all taught that it was one of the many signs of America’s
superiority over the Russian commies that we didn’t talk that way.
American cultural products and conservatives routinely satirized this commiespeak.

Now, American
servicemen heading for Iraq are given “talking points” on cards
and in slide shows to enable them to better relate to the media and others.
Amongst the talking points are: “We are a values-based, people-focused
team that strives to uphold the dignity and respect of all.” … “We
are not an occupying force.” … “We are moving forward
together with the Iraqi government as partners in building a future for
the sons and daughters of Iraq.” … “Coalition forces
will help our Iraqi partners as they build their new and independent country
and take their rightful place in the world community.”{2}

And here is
Dick Cheney speaking of Viktor Yushchenko, newly elected president of Ukraine
(color him good for he’s “pro-West”): “Free nations
stood with him as he made his just demands that the voice of the people
be heard. The free world will stand with him once again as he works to
consolidate Ukraine’s democratic gains.”{3}

In his January
20 inauguration speech, which lasted 21 minutes, President Bush used the
word “liberty” 15 times and the word “freedom” 27
times; that’s one or the other word casually dropped exactly once
every 30 seconds. He made not a single mention of Iraq or Afghanistan or
any other world issue. The president’s advisers said the speech was “the
rhetorical institutionalization of the Bush doctrine and reflected the
president’s deepest convictions about the purposes behind his foreign
policies.” But, they added, “it was carefully written not to
tie him to an inflexible or unrealistic application of his goal of ending
tyranny.”{4}

Only a man of
Mr. Bush’s, er, self-confidence, could believe that he could get
away with this.

And
Commie Socialist Realism

A TV ad for
Anheuser-Busch shown during the recent Super Bowl: An airport, a contingent
of US soldiers in uniform is passing through, presumably on the way to
or just returning from Iraq; the people in the terminal one by one look
up, and slowly realize who’s walking by — It’s (choke) … Can
it (gasp) be? … Yes! HEROES!! Real honest-to-God heroes!! The faces
of the onlookers are filled with deep gratitude and pride. The soldiers
begin to realize what’s happening as the waves of adulation sweep
over them, their faces are bursting with matching gratitude and matching
pride, their faces say “Thanks.” The screen says “Thanks.” Not
a dry eye in the whole damn terminal.

In the USSR
they might have been a group of Stakhanovite hero workers on the way to
the factory.

The
guilty saved by a guilty conscience

February 13
marked the 60th anniversary of the firebombing of Dresden by the United
States and Great Britain in World War II. Several thousand people marched
in Dresden on that day to condemn the incendiary destruction of the beautiful
old city and the taking of tens of thousands of lives for no apparent military
purpose. (It’s been suggested that the motivation had to do with
the expectation that the city would soon be falling under Soviet control.)
The Western media has referred to the demonstrators simply as “neo-Nazis” and “fascists” as
if no German citizen or anyone else could have any good reason to be upset
by the bombing, which could well qualify as a war crime. The Independent
of London reported that “Churchmen in Dresden have blamed hostility
to the Allies on East German Communist propaganda which for decades held
that the raid was a needless act of ‘Anglo-American aggression’ inflicted
on innocent civilians.” Dresden was part of East Germany.

The operative
word here is “guilt”. German guilt is so heavy that, apart
from the right wing, Germans generally reject attempts to lessen it by
blaming the Allies for anything; and likewise reject attempts to portray
Germans as also victims of World War II. German Chancellor Gerhardt Schröder
appealed to Germans to reject such interpretations of the Dresden raid. “Showing
historical responsibility means not weighing crimes against suffering,” he
said. “I always remember how much suffering Germany caused to others
by a war that it started.”{5}

The same guilt
factor comes into play in the recent scenario involving Germany and US
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Under a 2002 German law allowing prosecutors
to investigate war crimes no matter where they occurred, the Center for
Constitutional Rights in New York filed a request with the German prosecutor’s
office to investigate war crimes charges against Rumsfeld arising from
the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. The Germans chose to ignore their own law
and declined to pursue the matter. The outcome was never in doubt. The
idea of the German government prosecuting an American official for war
crimes borders on science fiction.

Neo-conservative
fairy tales

What do you
call a man who said: “When history is written, the contras will be
folk heroes?”{6}

The man was
speaking of that charming band of Nicaraguans who went around in the 1980s
burning down schools and medical clinics, murdering teachers, doctors and
nurses, and sabotaging any other accomplishment the Sandinista government
could point to with pride (all carried out with the invaluable assistance
of the CIA, fulfilling its historical role of counter-revolutionary).

You call the
man Elliott Abrams and you also call him the new deputy national security
adviser to President Bush; another promotion for the man who in the 1980s
in the Reagan administration was a tireless campaigner for the vilest of
dictatorships, death squads, and torturers in Central America and Pinochet’s
Chile. In 1991 he pled guilty to the much lesser crime of withholding information
from Congress in the Iran-contra affair but was pardoned by George W.’s
dad.

History, in
recent years, has been kinder to Abrams than to his prediction. It would
be difficult to find anyone outside of extreme-neo-con-land who has a charitable
word for the contras, who also engaged in widespread drug trafficking and
were accomplished rapists.

As can be seen
in my essay referred to above, another neo-con leading light, Michael Ledeen,
of the American Enterprise Institute, also tried his hand at prognostication
shortly before the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, declaring that “If
we just … wage a total war against these tyrants, I think we will
do very well, and our children will sing great songs about us years from
now.”

I could not
resist. Last spring I sent Mr. Ledeen an email reminding him of his words
and saying simply: “I’d like to ask you what songs your children
are singing these days.”

I received no
reply.

Does anyone
have Elliott Abrams’ email address?

Are
they not devilishly clever?

What’s
that? They’ve cut the budget for the Environmental Protection Agency
by 506 million dollars? How can they do that? Do they want to wreck the
EPA? Yes, that’s the idea. Same with Social Security. Same with any
federal agency that gives corporations or the wealthy a hard time or that
smacks of the government helping lesser folk. The gargantuan tax cuts not
only rained money down on rich Republican Party contributors, but they
produced deficits which are now being used as an excuse for cuts in social
spending, always at the top of the wish list for the AynRandites of the
Bush administration.

What’s
next? Attacking unions, gay marriage, and the ACLU?

In the last
issue of this report, I discussed how prominent Democrats have been trying
to sound like Republicans on religious matters, talking it up holy-like
on god and bible. Now we have clear indications of the Democrats sliding
backwards on the abortion issue.{7} And topping it all off was a letter
of January 13 signed by 21 Democratic senators — including Kennedy,
Clinton, Kerry, Biden, Schumer and Kohl — to the president urging
him to expand the military. The letter opens with: “The United States
military is too small for the missions it faces. Accordingly, we write
today to urge you to include funding for an expanded active duty Army and
Marine Corps in your FY2006 budget request.”{8}

The time when
Democrats offered the voting public a clear liberal alternative to the
conservative Republicans has become a subject for nostalgia buffs. Progressives
surely have their work cut out for them. But it’s best that they
proceed with their eyes open and their backs unturned. Howard Dean as chairman
of the Democratic Party will not make their job easier. He wasn’t
chosen to put a brake on the movement to the right. “I don’t
mind being called a liberal,” he said last year. “I just don’t
really think it’s true.”

Hypocrisy
of this magnitude has to be respected

At last year’s
meeting of the UN Commission on Human Rights, the United States sponsored
a motion criticizing China’s record on human rights and is considering
doing so again at this year’s meeting in March. Chinese treatment
of prisoners is one thing that bothers the State Department, including
holding prisoners without revealing their names.{9} (Did anyone say Guantanamo?)

I wonder when
the US will start “rendering” prisoners to China for interrogation
cum torture. Or have they already begun?

The State Department
is also upset that Cuba and Zimbabwe are on a panel to develop the agenda
for the meeting. “The United States believes that countries that
routinely and systematically violate the rights of their citizens should
not be selected to review the human rights performance of other countries.”{10}

(Educational
note to elucidate the preceding: During the period of its revolution, Cuba
has had one of the very best records on human rights in all of Latin America.
Please see my essay in which I discuss this.){11}

Another member
on the panel with Cuba and Zimbabwe, but not singled out for rights violations
by the State Department, is Saudi Arabia. One would think that if the department
is politically unable to criticize the Saudis, it would have enough self-respect
and common sense to refrain from singling out any of the other panel members.

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